Untitled (2012) mixed media on paper
How did your personal interest in art develop
into a professional vocation?
I started showing my work publicly about 10
years ago. At a certain point in any creative
endeavour you need to leave the bedroom in
order to develop and further your skills. I'd
started doing quite large canvases, using oil
paint and renting space in a shared studio, all of
which gets pretty costly, so my initial aim was to
see if I could sell enough just to cover costs.
Exhibiting and taking a more serious approach to
painting in turn makes you work harder, paint
more and that I guess was the main motivation in
wanting to show work publicly.
You only started exhibiting your artwork in
the last 5 years or so. Did you feel hesitant
about showing your work publicly?
It's nice if other people like your work but first
and foremost you've got to like it yourself, and if
that's the case there's no point in being anxious.
There's some terrible stuff out there that people
love and vice versa, so there no point in being
overly concerned about others' opinion of your
work.
What are your goals as an artist? What kind
of impact would you like your work to have
on viewers?
I'd like to keep on painting and showing, and try
and improve various techniques. I'm not really
thinking about the viewer when I'm painting, the
pictures are generally untitled and ambiguous in
their setting so as the viewer can project their
own understanding of the image.
Does your experience as an actor inform
your work as a visual artist? And conversely,
has your artwork influenced the way you
approach acting?
I try to empathise with the figures in my paintings
and I guess there's some similarity with acting
there, and I usually sketch a few drawings of a
character before I start an acting role.